Carlton Club meeting

The meeting voted decisively against the Coalition, which resulted in its collapse, the resignation of Austen Chamberlain as party leader, and the invitation of Law to form a Government.

In October 1922, the overall state of the parties in Parliament was:[1] Conservative discontent with the Coalition was maximised by the sudden diplomatic crisis with Turkey and Lloyd George's willingness to see war over the Turkish threat to the British and French troops stationed at Çanakkale.

Curzon knew that the response would cause a diplomatic breach with France where the Prime Minister was friendly towards the Turks; in fact, the French had already ordered their troops' withdrawal.

[4] Chamberlain, in his speech in Birmingham on 13 October, asserted that the Coalition was united and that Lloyd George had behaved with perfect loyalty to the Conservatives in it.

[5] On 15 October Chamberlain called a meeting of all Conservative Members of the House of Commons, to ask for a vote of confidence in his leadership and in the continuation of the coalition.

Chamberlain intended that a common electoral programme be agreed for the general election and the precise details be settled after the expected victory despite the fact that Lloyd George had specifically opposed that in his speech.

On 7 October, a letter from Law was published by The Times, outlining his views on future British policy in the Near East, which differed from that of the Coalition.

Leo Amery, who disliked the idea of a Coalition which existed only for the "negative policy of anti-Socialism", called a meeting of 17 Conservative ministers on 16 October, at which he found many wanted Lloyd George deposed.

Also on that day, about 80 Conservative MPs met under Sir Samuel Hoare; they supported independence in the election with possible post-election co-operation with Coalition Liberals.

[9] Simultaneously with the crisis, there was a by-election campaign underway in the borough of Newport caused by the death of the sitting Coalition Liberal MP.

According to this report, Chamberlain as chair began by complaining that the "storm of attack and criticism" over the Chanak Crisis had weakened Britain's influence and undermined its authority.

Frank Mildmay regarded some of the criticism of Lloyd George as unfair and unpatriotic but referred to a previous speech by Chamberlain that declared that the Government should not go into an election as a coalition.

Sir Henry Craik also spoke in support of fighting the election independently, believing the party had not fully exercised its influence in Government.

He dismissed the suggestion that Lloyd George was insinuating Liberal principles onto the Conservative ministers and believed that breaking up the Coalition would destroy the machinery that would best tackle future political issues and artificially revive the two-party system.

After James Fitzalan Hope made an attempt to adjourn the meeting until the following day, Sir A. Shirley Benn spoke of his recollection that the Coalition was to last one Parliament only.

This was the number published in Volume 56 of Gleanings & Memoranda, the official Conservative Central Office record at that time, and was repeated in classic works such as Beaverbrook's Decline and Fall of Lloyd George, AJP Taylor's English History 1914-1945 and The Unknown Prime Minister, Robert Blake's 1955 biography of Law.

Although Kinnear listed the contemporary views of all MPs, where known, in a long appendix, and named nine for whom Chamberlain and Davidson gave a different result, he stated that it was not possible to reconcile all discrepancies.

[20][15] Historian Michael Kinnear noted that according to Austen Chamberlain's list MPs voted according to a clear pattern, with those in traditionally Liberal areas supporting the Coalition, while those in safe Conservative seats opposed it.

His accession to the leadership was, however, regarded as a formality,[22] and his first call after leaving the Palace was to invite Curzon to remain as Foreign Secretary when the Government was formed.

[23] A meeting of the Unionist Party was summoned for Monday 23 October at the Hotel Cecil and unanimously confirmed Law as the new Leader; he "kissed hands" and formally succeeded Lloyd George as Prime Minister in the afternoon, and immediately obtaining a dissolution of Parliament and calling a general election for 15 November.